How do you feel about a giant 3D LED statue of your head on public display?
‘As We Are’, Mathew Mohr’s project for a public art installation, is an endeavor to make people accept their flaws and imperfections through a giant statue of their faces. This unique and weird experiment targets fans of selfies that like to present an idealized image of themselves on social media.
Who is Matthew Mohr?
Mohr is an associate professor at the Columbus College of Art and Design. He is a specialist in design and fine arts and also advertising and graphic design. Mohr’s professional career includes working with clients such as Samsung, Newsweek, NASA and Bloomingdale’s as an e-commerce designer and manager. Moreover, he co-owns Wonder-Shirt, a company that promotes reading and encourages children to read.
The gigantic art installation is impressive
Located at the Greater Columbus Convention Center atrium in Columbus, Ohio, the art installation is the fruit of the collaboration of Mohr’s and a Boston company named Design Communications Ltd. Made up of 850,000 LED lights, the sculpture stands at 14 ft tall and forms a three-dimensional human head. At the back, a photo booth equipped with 29 cameras take pictures of visitors willing to have their faces appear on the giant head. In fact, the statue can store up to a 100,000 portraits on-site. People willing to live this experience need not rush as the statue will stay there between seven to ten years.
How do you imagine your face on a giant 14 ft statue?
The artist says that it is both a fun and intense experience to see yourself displayed on a giant head like this. As per Mohr,”The magnification and amplification of your head in a public space speaks to the presence of social media and the way that identity is changing in society.” The public is welcomed to have their pictures taken and displayed as they’ve never seen before.
Selfies have become a modern fact of life
Mohr’s experiment is first and foremost about people accepting the imperfections and flaws of their faces. It is the exact opposite of the dozen of selfies you take and delete to find the perfect one. ‘As We Are’ aims at helping people differentiate their real selves from the hundreds of perfect pictures we post on social media. The project focuses on exploring how people see themselves and what kind of image they present to the world. A giant statue of yourself gives everyone a taste of a new perspective that is only reserved for heroes and the powerful.
The experiment also aims at even distribution of skin tones
As per Mohr, the idea is also an opportunity to present Columbus as a welcoming and diverse culture. The hundreds or thousands of faces stored in the giant structure’s database will keep on rotating to show the diversity in tone. It is a bold endeavour to show the different cultures and colours on a large scale. In fact, the whole experiment is an attempt at portraying the social media age and our diverse culture as part of a gigantic art piece.
h/t: Digital Trends
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